You can give your players incentive to do things, but if it’s not the incentive they’re looking for they will probably demonstrate it by their in game actions. Some examples of player incentives include:

I had the same thought re: “booty”. (well, they *are* about to become pirates, aren’t they? Leggy *did* ask for parlay, didn’t he?) I recalled Shamus’ words below “Girl Trouble”: [quote]90% of the players out there will simply let her join without a second thought. The other 10% will try to have sex with her first.[/quote]

RoxySteve asks, “How did that happen? I was tenth a second ago and now that sneaky bugger nogard_codesmith stole my spot.”

Some people’s comments are moderated. (Brassbaboon is the most common victim. No matter how many times I approve his comments, WordPress still shoves his stuff into the queue for me to review.) I don’t know why WordPress picks on some people and not others. Sometimes it seems to be related to their homepage / email.

Anydangway, when I free one of these trapped comments, the poster keeps their original timestamp and jumps into the thread where they “should” be, thus displacing later people. Culinte got first post, and it re-numbered the list when I approved that comment.

Heh, I go with Cat. How could he be king and NOT ask for the old king’s treasure? Oh, we’re supposed to be dealing with “heroic kings” not “actual kings” here. That’s the difference.

Aragorn’s got a point though. If the dead king was a king, he had a lot of stuff at one point. What he should tell Aragorn is that Sauron took all his stuff and to get it back, he’ll have to defeat Sauron.

Shamus, I’ve been reading these from the beginning, and it’s required reading for me now. I even read your blog posts now. In fact, I’m also watching you sleep right now, so that’s pretty exciting for me.

Every now and then you find a player that actually plays their character. I try very hard to do that. I don’t think any of my characters are driven by greed for money.

My 12th level evil wizard is driven by one overriding purpose. He wants to create artifacts. You could call this an obsession in fact. It’s not so much that he wants to become famous, as he just wants to become the most powerful creator of magical items in the world. Of course the rules of D&D say that he cannot create artifacts, but he hasn’t read the rules. He knows they exist, he knows they were created by powerful mages in the past, and he reasons that more can be created in the future. Pretty much his entire motivation revolves around that goal.

My 14th level lawful good Illusionist is not interested in such arcane intellectual pursuits. His goal is to fight for good and defeat evil. He appreciates treasure as a means to further those ends. But he isn’t after money for money’s sake.

My 2nd level druid (half elf, half dryad) doesn’t really even understand the concept of money that well yet, she is more than a little perplexed by the obvious fascination of her party members for little round pieces of metal. The party’s rogue is right now trying to get her to understand that with enough of these little round pieces of metal, she can purchase magic items that will help her pursue nature’s balance. But she’s having trouble buying that argument (pun intended).

Now I’m not the world’s best role player, but at least I role play that much.

Why am I put in the frame of mind that if these adventurers were dropped into a sea-shell based economy that they’d immediately find the shortest route to the shore and spend the rest of the time wading around in the surf with shovels?

“If the DM wasn't so amusingly playing into his evil players' hands, he'd point out that if the PC's save the world, they'll be at the top of the biggest, richest nation in the world…”

And it would be funnier when at the end DM says “Well, the good news is you are now in charge of the richest nation of men. The bad news is the campaign just ended. Now anybody up for a pirate based adventure? I have this new…”

My players are all about “Shineys” (misspelling intended). Shineys can be anything from rather expensive gems to ridiculously powerful magic items. One of my favorites to let them play with is the Deck of Many Things. Ohhh the adventures I’ve started (and ended) with that …

Shamus Says:
RoxySteve asks, “How did that happen? I was tenth a second ago and now that sneaky bugger nogard_codesmith stole my spot.”

Some people's comments are moderated. (Brassbaboon is the most common victim. No matter how many times I approve his comments, WordPress still shoves his stuff into the queue for me to review.) I don't know why WordPress picks on some people and not others. Sometimes it seems to be related to their homepage / email.

Anydangway, when I free one of these trapped comments, the poster keeps their original timestamp and jumps into the thread where they “should” be, thus displacing later people. Culinte got first post, and it re-numbered the list when I approved that comment.

Deck of Many Things… Ah the memories. The void… A Wish… loads and loads of fun.

Virtually all of my players have always exhibited greed almost exclusively over magic items. They always LIKE money, but nothing gets their blood flowing like a magic ring….

Which sort of amazes me, they always have visions of “ring of three wishes” and I’m usually giving them things like “ring of feather fall” or “ring of guidance.”

When I play instead of DM I always assume even the magic items are going to be pretty low-level, at least when my character is low level. I think Tolkien ruined it for everyone giving Frodo a +3 short sword with enemy detection, a ring of invisibility and chain mail armor +5 for a first level rogue. Sigh…

I love the list of incentives. But I must admit when reading a site named “Twenty sided” and then seeing a list of only 19 items, I feel like something is missing. Couldn’t come up with one more? How about Magical Weapons or Toys?

Actually, D&D needs a mechanic (of which there was something in the First Edition) whereby fame/status/glory etc becomes marketable somehow. Otherwise, so many players seem so uninterested in anything other than gold. In other words, ‘let’s do this’ and the King might give us estates/tax breaks (and Players DESERVE taxes), vassals or bargains on construction material…

Face it, after you play a few characters always chasing loot, the greedy lust for gold changes. Who wants to play the same character over and over? So you start with a wizard who lusts for power, then a knight who lusts for lost glory, or a bard who just…lusts. But as brassbaboon points out, gold always helps a character achieve their goal even if the gold itself is uninteresting to them. The wizard can buys scrolls, the knight weapons, the bard, satin sheets. Still, it's always fun to play a monk refusing reward, just to watch the thief's eyes bulge out!

That’s sort of how my druid acts. When the local mayor offered the party a reward of gold, she essentially said “what do I need gold for? Does it make trees grow? Does it feed the animals?” The rogue did, in fact, do a double take, pulled me aside and said “hold on, let’s work this out.” He ended up with “Go ahead and take it, and let me hold it for you.” I thought it was hilarious.

The masterwork bow they Mayor handed her was another matter altogether. She liked that.

In my current campaign my rogue is carrying around a Deck of Many Things. I have yet to be even slightly tempted to deal a card, and can’t understand when it would ever be rational to do so. Maybe if you’re hanging around a peaceful city between campaigns with a high-level cleric who can undo so many of the bad effects to really change the odds, but otherwise, I just don’t get it.

I’ve gotta say, my sympathies are 80% with the players on their perpetual search for loot. I’m in a very long-term LOTR-style railroad campaign– deep into enemy lands with no surviving mounts, a need for stealth, no possible place to spend any of the treasure we do get, and a constant need to give up anything we’re managing to carry because we bump up against encumbrance limits and need to carry life-saving stuff. We’ve left behind three huge treasure troves, carrying the gems basically as fuel for future spells and a few hundred platinum. We’ve been acquiring magic goodies all along, but we’re incredibly cash-poor and wouldn’t be able to use the money anyway.

I clicked in through the Livejournal RSS and the comic was not present. I had to click on the Ring to get back to the table of contents, then click back into the comic, in order to see it. This may be an issue with the work firewall, but if anyone else is experiencing this problem please chime in. :)

Well, the mention of d20 and the list containing a mere 19 items piqued my interest. Thus, in the interest of appeasing those with OCD (and potentially giving future DMs something with which to confuse their players): Aurum. Latin for gold, the whole reason we have Au on every periodic table.

Not particularily something I’d expect in a thesaurus.

Also…same old ‘read them all, first post’ stuff everyone breaks out. This is one of those things that – were copyright infringement not an issue – would make a good book to throw in with a few D&D rule books.